Video communication systems may utilize any of a variety of video encoding techniques to efficiently utilize limited communication bandwidth. Such systems generally utilize relatively low amounts of communication bandwidth at the expense of relatively high amounts of data processing on the transmitting and receiving systems.
Many modern video communication systems utilize video compression (or encoding) based on motion compensation. Decoding video information that has been encoded with a motion compensation technique (e.g., particularly in real-time) may require a relative large amount of memory access bandwidth. For example and without limitation, accessing reference video information for motion compensation processing may require a relatively large amount of memory access bandwidth.
The general trend has been to provide relatively larger amounts of memory access bandwidth through the utilization of larger memory modules (e.g., providing more data per read) and memory types with multiple memory accesses per read cycle (e.g., dual data rate and quadruple data rate memory chips). For various types of memory accesses, however, increasing memory access bandwidth using the above solutions may increase video decoder performance by only a low amount relative to the cost.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.